By a Vote of 98-0, Senate Approves 25-Year Extension of Voting Rights Act

By CARL HULSE

Published: July 21, 2006

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to extend the landmark Voting Rights Act for another 25 years, as lawmakers of both parties said federal supervision was still required to protect the ability of minorities and the disadvantaged to cast ballots in some regions of the country.

''Despite the progress these states have made in upholding the right to vote, it is clear the problems still exist,'' said Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois.

Approval of the measure, on a 98-to-0 vote, came on the day that President Bush made his first presidential visit to a convention of the N.A.A.C.P., where he promised to sign the bill.

The House passed the measure last week after a flurry of rebellion from several Southern lawmakers.

Republicans had made renewal of the law a cornerstone of party efforts to reach out to minority groups, particularly blacks, and leaders of both parties promised its passage in a rare joint event on the steps of the Capitol this year.

But progress was slowed by objections from some Republicans in the House that the law unfairly singled out Southern states for special federal oversight when they have eradicated the rampant discrimination that spurred enactment of the law in 1965.

Some Senate Republicans expressed similar sentiments Thursday but none opposed the measure. ''Other states with much less impressive minority progress and less impressive minority participation are not covered, while Georgia still is,'' said Senator Saxby Chambliss. ''This seems both unfair as well as unwise.''

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law after violent attacks on civil rights marchers demanding the right to vote. It instituted a nationwide prohibition against voting discrimination based on race and banned poll taxes and literacy tests.

In regions where discrimination had been especially pronounced, the Justice Department was given the authority to review changes to election procedures, like redistricting, to judge if they would be discriminatory.

The current legislation retained the so-called pre-clearance requirement for nine states, most of them in the South, and for parts of seven others, including Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York.

Another provision opposed by some Republicans requires the printing of bilingual ballots in political jurisdictions that meet a threshold for the percentage of citizens who have difficulty with English.

Most Republicans joined united Democrats in pushing ahead, saying that while the Voting Rights Act had produced historic results, it was still warranted.

''South Carolinians, you have come a long way,'' said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from that state, which is among those covered by the law. ''But we, just like every other part of this country, still have a long way to go.''

Civil rights leaders praised the Senate action and called on Mr. Bush to send a strong signal to the Justice Department that the measure must be strongly enforced.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who watched the Senate debate from the gallery, said that the Bush administration had sided with states in voting rights cases and that it had been left to the courts to intervene.

''So far, the Department of Justice has favored states' rights over federal enforcement,'' Mr. Jackson said. ''We see a pattern.''

The legislation was named for several civil rights figures: Coretta Scott King, Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks.

As the Senate voted, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, who was beaten in the 1965 voting rights march on Montgomery, Ala., came to the floor, and other lawmakers provided their memories of the era as they spoke in support of the legislation.

''I recall watching President Lyndon Baines Johnson sign the 1965 act just off the chamber of the Senate,'' said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of three current senators serving when the law was originally passed. ''We knew that day we had changed the country forever, and indeed we had.''

Photo: Representative John Lewis, left, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the room where President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. (Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times)